The Magic Behind What Appears On Our Facebook NewsFeed

Just like Google’ssearch algorithm, Facebook‘s news feed ranking algorithm – EdgeRank – is a bit of a mystery. There are very few people out there who know how it works exactly and how Facebook decides what to show each user. From time to time we hear about changes that will affect our experience on the platform or the performance of our Page posts, but we can never really be sure about what what will happen next. To be clear, there are two sides to the story, both of which are constantly being updated.

How Does Facebook Decide What To Show Users?

Apparently, there are well over 100,000 considerations to News Feed’s ranking but most of them are not public knowledge so we can’t be 100% sure. We are however aware of some of them.

1. Post Types

There is a reason that some post types receive higher engagement rates than others, and Facebook knows this. It wants to show people things that they are more likely to interact with, so it will always take into consideration how well a certain post-type performs versus another with that particular user. Anyone who posts mostly links instead of images or YouTube links instead of Facebook native videos will understand this.

2. User’s Actions

How a user interacts with certain posts is also important. Facebook will look at which posts a user will hide, ask to not see again, and which he or she will report as spam. What a user will see on his or her News Feed in the future is directly linked to past interaction with specific posts. This shows that there is a certain amount of sophistication with regards to how posts are categorised perhaps.

3. User Interaction With Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are targeted, so Facebook naturally looks at their relevance to the particular audience. And it seems that a user’s interaction with specific adverts is also considered when deciding what to display on the News Feed.

4. Device-type And Internet Speed

Facebook is very serious about creating the optimal user-experience, so it is unlikely to show a user content that is too heavy to load acceptably on his or her mobile device. This is directly linked to the type of device itself, as well as the internet connection that the user has on that device.

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How Does User-behavior Affect The NewsFeed Visibility Of a post?

Now, let’s look more specifically at what user-activities affect the visibility of a post, delving deeper into how a user’s behaviour affects ranking.

1. Interaction With The Author
You are more likely to see posts from a certain person if you interact with them more often. You will have realised this from the fact that you don’t really see posts from Facebook friends you don’t interact with… ever.

2. Interaction With Post Type
If you interact with photos, you are more likely to see more photos appear on your news feed. Facebook assumes that you are more interested in a certain content type. Simple. Of course there are other weighting factors here, but interaction shows interest.

3. Reactions From Other Users
Combined with all the above, you are more likely to see posts that others have interacted with before you, or that are being interacted with. Posts with high interaction are given more reach.

4. Complaints & Feedback Negative feedback on a specific post will affect it’s visibility. The more people complain about it, the fewer users will see it appear in their News Feeds.